On the Edge of a Knife

Summary:
One day, Edward is acting strange, and Bella has no idea why. That night...

Notes:
This is from that seventh grader again, FWI. So if you don't want to read this, then don't, because it might be a bit boring... If you do, then read on! As always... Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight, or any of the characters (I wish I owned Edward, though). No copyright infringement is intended.

2. Change

“Bella?” The question hung there—I still couldn’t tell who it was. The window creaked the slightest bit, then, someone came in.

This time I couldn’t stifle a shriek. My voice was echoing in my head, giving me a migraine. That wasn’t a good sign.

A slight figure hopped gracefully down from the sill. Then I recognized who it was. Alice. What was she, of all people, doing here at night? It was normally Edward—the name still stung from the situation yesterday—who came here at midnight, wondering how I was doing. This also was not a good sign. If Alice was here, then there was definitely a problem.

“Bella? Are you awake? We have to go!” Her usually calm voice was panicked and I struggled to pick out her words.

I sat up in bed, my hair tumbling around my face. I was relatively sure it looked like a haystack. Horror filled me from head to toe. Alice had said that we had to leave. What reason was there to go? There was something horribly wrong—I would have to accept that.

Gone? What? The last time this happened, he was planning to commit suicide. I knew that wouldn’t occur again, but I still felt a huge amount of concern for his safety. When there was something big, Edward tended to be rash at making decisions.

“Where did he go?” The sound that erupted from my throat was hoarse. It sounded like I need water. Badly.

“I don’t know. In my visions, all I can see is that the,” she gulped and continued, “Volturi took him away.”

I fell to the ground. This was too much. Last year, he had gone to Italy out of his own will, this time, he was kidnapped. I hoped that this was not going to become a yearly tradition. My eyelids shut of their own accord. My limbs hung around me, limp, lifeless. My head thudded sonorously on the timber floor. This was just too much. Way too much.

“Bella? Bella? Bells?” Alice’s voice was alarmed and full of anxiety. There was a touch of hysteria underlying her tone. I totally blacked out.

~*~

Pain was coursing through me, burning my chest and cracking my legs. There was so much agony. The fire was in my veins, scorching my body inside out. It was too much to bear.

Fire. There was fire all over me. Why didn’t anyone notice? I didn’t see anything, but I knew that someone was there. Wasn’t Alice with me before? Then I recognized the feeling. It was the same searing pain that was in my hand last year. I finally got the fact processed in my head—I was becoming a vampire. I knew that this had always been my dream, to be with Edward forever. But now, I didn’t even know if it was worth it. It sure didn’t feel like it was worth it. All this pain was slicing me into shreds. I felt like I was dying. In a way, I was experiencing death. My heart was going to stop beating, the blood in under my skin would be washed out of me. I wouldn’t eat or sleep. All I would do would be to drink. Drink blood. Through the misery I felt, I shivered. If I fainted at the sight of blood as a human, there was no telling what I would do when I had to swallow it.

The transformation was tearing me apart—I thought I would go mad with fury. The liquid fire coursed through my blood vessels, scouring the insides free of any traces of my humanity.

My whole body shuddered like I was having a seizure. My limbs were always shaking—yet I was burning. I thrashed continually in agony. My head twisted from side to side, straining my neck.

I was in my own personal hell. But, unlike before, my angel wasn’t there with me. I fact, he wasn’t there at all. A year ago, there was a cool hand that was there to comfort me, to make my pain and aches go away. There was his beautiful voice, soothing me and leading me out of my misery. Last time, there was an angel in hell. This time, there was no one. No one to help me through this crisis. There was no strong hand there for me to hold. Nothing.

This was worse than death. I had never died before, but now I could empathize. I just wanted this to stop. Whatever reason I had subjected myself to this for was no worth it. Why had I mad this decision at all? I was just pretending to be strong when I had said I really wanted this for myself. I was faking it. I wasn’t really that brave. Was I?

“I’m not worth it.”

Those words shook me now. I finally realized their meaning. I knew what he meant now. The pain, the sadness that saturated his voice when he had said that wasn’t recorded in my memory, but the meaning was crystal clear. I couldn’t do it. I wouldn’t last three days. Three days. I mentally shivered. How much time had passed, anyway? I forced myself to listen to the conversation that was going on outside of my thoughts.

“Do you think Bella will lose her clumsiness when she’s one of us?” it was Emmett’s deep voice. He sounded like he was throwing a laughing fit. He didn’t seem the least bit disturbed that someone was undergoing an excruciating transformation in the same room as he was.

“I doubt it. Nothing could fix that problem.” This time it was Alice’s wind-chime voice. Though her tone was light, it sounded like she was suppressing tears. I could almost hear her thoughts. She was probably debating whether or not she should have changed me. At least someone cared about me.

“It’s been about two days already. I don’t see a difference in Bella’s appearance yet. Hmmm, Carlisle said that she should have turned a bit paler from loss of blood. That’s not the case here. In fact, her cheeks are still that shade of crimson.” Esme was acting like a concerned mother again.

Then, a wave of pain rippled through my body, making me scream in agony. The suffering was unbearable.

I could feel icy hands patting all over me. Alice’s high tinkling voice was anxious and worried.

“Bella? Are you okay? It’s going to be over soon, I promise.”

I turned onto my side, clutching my abdomen. I felt like I was having a stomachache. It was like all the acids in my digestive system were attacking my gut. The ironic thing was, I probably didn’t have any stomach acids left.

I writhed and writhed, like a sidewinder in the desert sand. Only one day, I repeated in my head. Even I couldn’t convince myself that this was going to end someday. That this pain wouldn’t go on forever. The inferno scourged my insides for the next twenty-four hours. I can tell you, the transformation was unbearably painful. And, just as I was about to tell Alice to kill me to save me from the pain—this time literally kill and not figuratively—the agony subsided.

Cool washed over me. Relief like I had never felt before flowed through me, my veins and arteries, my capillaries, too, for that matter. I could feel new strength. I even felt confident in my ability to walk without doing much damage.

I leaped up gracefully—I was almost as agile as someone else I had remembered from an eternity ago. Where was I? Why the heck was I on a leather couch? And who were these people standing beside me? These were all questions that need to be answered. I would have to find out.

A beautiful blonde woman glared at me with piercing black eyes. I turned around and looked in the window. There was a reflection there. I saw a brown haired, white-faced, crimson eyed girl. I wondered who it was.

I leaned closer to the window. The figure inside mimicked my movement. Then I realized something.